Category Archives: Veganism

Would You Please Stop Interrupting?

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A month or so ago, I had a bout of IBS.  After a few days of trying to just tough it out, eating the usual fruits and veggies – even though I wanted crackers and bananas more, I did some research about what I should be eating to calm the system down.  Interestingly, I found that the items I had felt like eating (crackers, bread, bananas, applesauce) were exactly what I needed to eat to get my system back on track.  Having been authorized by Google, I accepted that diet for a few weeks and now feel much better.

Last week, my body seemed to need a rest day from yoga, and I was not happy about it.  But, after arguing with myself, I took it.  And the next day my yoga practice went really well – I felt strong and good and the back pain I was having started to dissapate.

Toward the end of last week, a friend was worrying with me about why she wanted to eat so much (and mostly carbs) during the week before menstruation.  We did a little research and concluded that, between the drop in estrogen and the drop in serotonin that  seems to occur at that time, it makes utter sense to consume more complex carbs.

Then, yesterday (Sunday), I found myself totally exhausted at 10 a.m.  I was so tired my eyes were burning and I had to go lay down for an hour.  As usual, I was scolding myself about it, when it occurred to me that a similar thing had happened the previous Sunday, but I blamed it on going out Saturday night.  And, when I thought about it, the Sunday before had been the same way, and so on.  After pondering for a while, it finally struck me that I have been taking my weekly large dose of methotrexate on Saturday evening.  And what is a major side effect of MTX?  Fatigue.  Ohhh.

So, what’s the moral here?  I think it’s that sometimes, or often, our bodies know what they need and they try to tell us.  We just don’t always listen.  Toddlers get it.  They will sometimes go a day or three eating next to nothing.  And then suddenly eat 6 bananas in an afternoon.  And maybe the next day they only want green beans and chicken.  It drives parents insane.  We think our little dears are going to starve, but they don’t.  If we make healthy food available and let them make selections, they do pretty well.  They haven’t learned how to shut down that body voice yet.

Maybe we should take a page from the book of toddlers.  Eat when we are hungry (though we may have to think about what we are hungry for, because as adults we have hunger all mixed up with other things), nap when we are tired, smile when we are happy, cry when we are sad.  We probably shouldn’t bite anyone, but other than that it sounds not so bad.

What is your body trying to tell you?

About that Letting Go…

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Last week, I posted a poem about letting go, something that I’m working on in many ways in my life right now.  In the last week, both of my adult children have, coincidentally and separately, asked me why it is that yoga is appealing or relaxing, given that the poses look so uncomfortable.  So, I’ve spent some time thinking about how yoga, and a raw food diet, seem to be good for me in terms of letting go (not that I’m there, but I think I’m much closer than I would be without).

Letting go of the fruit of action,
the intelligent of unified intuition,
liberated from the bondage of birth,
go the way free from misery.

~ Bhagavad Gita

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells us that letting go is about doing what is right because we believe it should be done, not because of the success or failure of it.  This is the yogic principle of detachment.  When I first started practicing yoga, I didn’t “get it.”  Why, I wondered, would I want to detach from things?  Why would I want to lose my joy and my sorry and replace them with apathy?  Why shouldn’t I be proud of my successes and responsible for my failures?  Now that I’m a tiny teeny itty bit more enlightened (small change, microscopic almost), I think I’m beginning to understand that detachment isn’t necessarily an overall state of being.  It’s a process that we have to work through, day by day.  And, it doesn’t mean not feeling our feelings – instead it means feeling them and naming them and then changing how we respond to them, understanding what the values are in the process of each experience (regardless of outcome), and letting go of our judgments of self and need to control.

This is hard for most of us, I think, and harder for some of us.  I’m what some people would probably call a “control freak.”  I’m a people pleaser.  I’m success oriented.  I’m the rule follower and the “good girl.”  I was raised on the value of success and I internalized it to the Nth degree.  When I see what I consider an issue (in any part of my life or the lives of those I’m connected strongly with), I want to swoop in and fix it.  If I can, yay.  If I can’t, I tend to berate myself and obsess over what I can do instead.  More than once in a while, I keep myself up for hours planning how I might solve a particular problem, help someone out, succeed at some task, move “ahead” in something, etc.  It’s been a fruitful way to be in terms of keeping up with my work and developing a reputation as someone who gets things done, but it has been very hard on me psychologically.  Even succeeding at a task causes stress from this frame of mind, because I always wonder – “Could I have done it even better?”

So, where does yoga and raw food come in here?  Well, since the yoga connection is more established, and probably more powerful, let me begin with raw food.  When I’m following a raw food plan, and managing to keep my surroundings stocked well with fruits and veggies so that I’m not pulled from it by hunger, I pretty much stop thinking about how much I eat and judging the calorie content or whether I ate too close together, too far apart, or too near bedtime.  I just eat when and what my body seems to be asking for.  I enjoy the taste in the moment and then I move on.  I’ve noticed that I don’t seem to crave (obsess?) over food that I want in the same way when I’m observing a raw food plan.  Even if I think about something yummy, like carrot cake or pecan pie, I can pretty much just think about it, acknowledge that it would taste good, and then move on.  I don’t find myself in the kitchen eating 12 other things trying to stifle the urge for the one “bad” thing that I really want.   So, for me, raw foodism seems to help me let go, somewhat, of some of my issues with eating.

Now yoga, that’s been the driving force for me thinking about letting go.  As I listened to my instructors and read about yoga and the philosophies and teaching behind it, I’ve been intrigued by the possibility of letting go – of engaging the process without such focus on the outcome, doing what I believe is right for the sake of doing it – not for the rewards that come with it.  This brings me back to the question my sons asked about how yoga can be relaxing when it’s so difficult.  I’ve already admitted that there are times when a competitive spirit creeps into my yoga practice.  So, I’m not going to pretend like I’m all super-yogi with this.  But, during a yoga practice, this is a time of day when I’m most likely to be able to let go of my attachment to a goal and just be there, in that moment, in the process of doing yoga because I think it is good for my body and my mind.  And, interestingly, even though I don’t spend much time in yoga thinking about other parts of my life (which is part of what I find relaxing about it – that is 60-90 minutes where I’m not worrying over job/family/friendship/society), I come out of it thinking more clearly and less judgmentally about the other things happening in my life.  If I do yoga on a regular basis, I seem to be less likely to yell at a child for a bad behavior (which partly goes right back to my desire to succeed – because I’ve obviously failed as a parent if my children are making mistakes), or get upset over others’ negative appraisals of me, and so on.

But, it’s a day to day thing.  When I butt up against something really difficult in life, or a problem that isn’t “mine” but “belongs” to someone I love, it is very hard not to slip into control mode.  And I do.  However, I think I’m at least able to recognize that this is what I’m doing and begin to reflect on the futility of blame and emphasis on outcome.  I do better at acknowledging the pain or sadness, naming it for myself, and working to not judge myself for having those feelings or for my own imperfections.

To hark back to the 70s… I’m letting go one day at a time.

Yes, I do have a Diet. No, I am not Dieting.

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To steal an opening from 82% of my public speaking students: Webster’s Dictionary (or Wikipedia) defines diet as “food and drink regularly provided or consumed.”  So, this means that however you eat, whatever your patterns are, that is your diet.  If you mostly eat orange food from a box/bag/carton/jar (kraft mac n’ cheese, cheetos, oj, cheese whiz, queso dip, doritos) then you have an orange diet.  If you primarily eat fruits and vegetables in their natural form, then you have a raw food diet.  If you do not eat any animal products, you have a vegan diet, and so on.

But, that’s not how we tend to think about “diet,” as a quick check of Google indicates.  When we think about or talk about diet, we tend to be focusing on the issue of weight loss.   I don’t know how this became the default definition of the word diet, but it seems to be.  If I tell people that I am on a raw food diet, the first response I get is, “Why? You don’t need to lose any weight.”  Now, whether I do or do not need to lose any weight is neither here nor there.  Why is the assumption that my eating plan is designed to promote weight loss?  I’m sure, somehow, this has to do with our increasing girth in much of the western world, combined with an obsession with slimness.

Regardless of how the situation arose, I think it is problematic that all of our attention to “diet” tends to revolve around weight loss.  When we focus on diet/dieting as a weight loss tool, our awareness is automatically drawn to what we cannot have.  So, when someone undertakes a low carb diet to lose weight, the focus is on eliminating carbs (bread, fruit, pasta, etc.) from the diet, not on what is eaten (vegetables, proteins, dairy).  This isn’t a very efficient way to change behavior for the better.

Put a small child in a room with a desk or a dresser and make a big deal of telling him/her not to open the drawer and then stand quietly outside and see how long it takes for the drawer to be opened.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  Chances are decent that the drawer will be opened.  Why?  Well, some psychologists/philosophers/sociologists/etc., like Gregory Bateson, would tell us that humans think in terms of what we are “not” doing, and that, in fact, the only way to think about not doing something is to imagine doing it.  So, when you tell that small child not to open the drawer, you leave him or her imagining what might happen if the drawer is opened and the desire to do so just increases.

It’s much the same with “dieting.”  As soon as you are told, or tell yourself, that you cannot have XYZ food, you spend a lot of time in your day thinking about not having that food, and thereby thinking about having it.  So, a low calorie diet becomes a day spent thinking, “I won’t eat a cookie.  I won’t eat a cookie.  I won’t eat a cookie… cookie… cookie… cookie,” and eventually, there you are with your hand in the cookie jar.  And then once you’ve already “messed up” your “diet” for the day by breaking the rule about what not to eat, you might as well go ahead and have 3 cookies, or 5, or 10.fruitveg

It’s much more useful to think about what we will/should eat.  Instead of thinking, “I can’t have a nacho plate for lunch,” you think “I’m going to make a huge salad with field greens, walnuts, cranberries, apples, and a raspberry vinaigrette for lunch.  Mmmmm.”  Now the focus shifts to what you are going to eat and how good and good for you it is going to be.  It’s a much healthier and happier way to approach food.  We are humans and we need to eat for survival (duh), but moreover, food tastes good to us (I don’t know if it works this way for cows, but I’m pretty sure it does for dogs).   It’s much nicer to think about all of the good (and good for us) things we can have instead of thinking about what we can’t have.

If we, as a culture, could adopt a view of diet that focused more on building a delicious and nutritious eating plan, and less on labeling some food as “bad” and some as “good” and then eliminating items based on their “badness,” we would be happier with ourselves and our meals.  And, who knows, we might just lose a few pounds  ; )